Ever since I moved from WordPress (ugh!) to Jekyll at the beginning of 2011, and then to Hugo, sometime in 2014, I haven’t had comments on any website I have dabbled with. I want to believe I have been happier that way. For a few I tried kudos here, using Tinylytics, but that didn’t last long.
Less is, truly, more.
Reading Alice Barlett’s weekly note earlier today, in which a daughter tells her father “Daddy, you are the man I love the most”, reminded me when the girl once told me too “Papá, I want to marry someone like you”, just around the same age as “E”. It made me feel so appreciated, and loved! I will never forget it.
Blizzard is at it again with a very lame anniversary “celebration”. That is, some worthless cosmetics, an extra Gift of the Tree cache on turn-ins, and some increased experience gain which will not be enought to get me to paragon 300 this season (I have never been able to reach it, because it requires a mind boggling amount of experience).
I don’t see me buying the season pass ever again. Absolutely not worth it.
Oh oh, should I worry? My brew upgrade just updated Hugo to v0.147.7. Last time I upgraded it everything broke loose. I figure I may as well test it, so this is it. If this post shows without errors, I should consider myself lucky, and clap twice.
Today I learned that Chrome doesn’t play MOV video files. It only likes MP4, and WebM. I discover it when looking at the note on WWDC (now an MP4), and seeing it blank. I figure MP4/WebM are smaller in size, so it doesn’t hurt using that format instead.
This marriage is truly over, unless one of the couple sacrifices themselves to keep the relationship alive a little bit longer.
“Elon Musk has hit out at President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending bill, saying he “can’t stand” the legislation and describing it as a ‘disgusting abomination’”.
“‘Shame on those who voted for it,’ Musk said in a post on X on Tuesday.”
Came across this thought, which ended up being a partial quote by Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, which I liked quite a bit once I found it whole.
“If I am I, because you are you, and you are you, because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you. But if I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you, and we can talk.”
➝ Via Loon thoughts.
I was talking to George earlier today about the rewatchability of mangas, and we both agreed that “Jujutsu Kaisen” has a high rewatchability rate. I liked the series—and movie—so much, that I even got me a t-shirt with Kento on it. Took it to our Japan trip, and I managed to get a bunch of school girls giggle, or laugh, while covering their mouth, and pointing at my direction. 🤭😅
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is coming up once more and, as always, I feel like kid before Christmas. The rumours I allowed myself to read tell something about Tahoe, and version 26, to match with year. Let’s see.
Update: 09 Jun 2025 @ 17:18
It is here, now! “Tune” in! Liquid Glass, oh my! Absolutely loving the upcoming updates for all versions 26s. With iPadOS 26, the iPad becomes one step closer (but not quite, since “macOS is superior”, as George pointed out) to becoming a “lite” laptop.
“You know, there are things that I don’t entirely agree with. But it’s difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention. So then, I’m a little stuck in a bind, where I’m like, well, I don’t wanna, you know, speak up against the administration, but I also don’t wanna take responsibility for everything this administration’s doing.”
Now we know “the rest of the story”, eh? Things were not as they seemed to be at Pleasantville, yes? What else is happening at the House of TACO?
It is hot, so hot, and humid. Rain might come too, though sun shines right now. I want to stay indoors, but she is dragging me out! 😩 Please, send help! 😅 Also, weekend may as well be over. Dear, oh dear!
Update: 01 Jun 2025 @ 19:22
We had a really good time with friends that stopped by at the Cape while cruising with the “Symphony of the Seas”. Just got home, really tired of driving. I am calling it a day now, for sure.
Kathleen and Roxanne are the residents across the hall from Dad’s room. Unlike Dad and Roxanne, who have family coming to see them, Kathleen is all alone. She spends all her days inside her room—well, she strolls around in her wheelchair but never ventures outside the building—all by herself.
For that reason alone, we have “adopted” her. We can’t take her outside, but when we visit Dad, I spend time conversing with her. We buy her cupcakes—we deliver a bunch of those to others, but she gets hers without fail. She likes popcorn and Diet Coke, so she gets them too. This year we celebrated her birthday—hat, card, cake, and singing—which she said hadn’t happened for a long time. It made us sad but happy to be able to do it.
“We haul your trash and your junk!” reads a sign that I have seen around the city. The local government does pick up regular (household) trash, and large junk (mattresses, televisions, refrigerators, etc.) once a week. That’s included in the $21.68 every household pays monthly through the City Utilities Commission.
For major house renovations, a dump bucket of many sizes can also be rented, usually by those doing the work. Who would have so much rubbish that businesses could be formed to cater to that need?
I am also left thinking: where would that business dump their haul? Unhealthy thoughts come to my mind. Call me a cynic.
Incredible photos taken inside musical instruments. Charles Brooks’ setup to accomplish this feat is borderline marvelous. Bigger photos, and the ability to buy prints at his website.
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There is no way anyone can say that Latin is a dead language, right? I mean, search The Tubes for “lorem ipsum” with your favourite search engine, and see. Dead, pfff, as if! ツ
Nothing, absolutely nothing about this regime surprises me. That’s obvious because of their past, and current behaviour. It is also worrisome; are we desensitising?
“He also took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms at private gatherings across the United States and in at least one other country, according to those who attended the events.”
I mean, read the whole thing. That’s the guy the current regime chose to spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency (is that even an official department?). Absolutely abhorrent.
Why everytime we deorbit something (a satellite, or, you know, the ISS, when its time comes) we bring it in, into the atmosphere, to crash on Earth? Why don’t we push them out, to the vast cosmos? A few answers come to mind, with cost making the only sense.
So, according to this, all my friends are my advisers, and viceversa. That puts friendship to another level. I feel stressed already!
“Musk left on good terms and is still friends with the president,” a senior administration official told CBS News. “This isn’t a separation, but just a return to the private sector for Musk. He will continue to be a friend to the president, and we can characterize that as an ‘adviser.’”
On my way home from lunch I saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of mine, right before I got into my neighbourhood. It read “I ❤️ Potholes”. Truly? What kind of a sociopath loves those things? 🤦🏻♂️
Update: 30 May 2025 @ 13:48
Oh wow! It is a thing, after all! It has to be either sarcasm, or someone who believes potholes slow vehicles down, hence worthy of love. 🤷🏻♂️
Claud wrote today, “Laughing is the best thing. My jaw is numb and that’s ok”. I couldn’t agree more! Dance too, Claud, dance!
I hope you never lose your sense of wonder. You get your fill to eat, but always keep that hunger. May you never take one single breath for granted. God forbid love ever leave you empty-handed.
🎶
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean. Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens. Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance. And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
🎶
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
It is true humans can bet on just about anything. With Jesus, the rules are simple:
“This market will resolve to “Yes” if The Second Coming of Jesus Christ occurs by December 31, 2025, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”.”
Also, TIL about Polymarket, which I am finding quite interesting. It is pretty much gambling, isn’t it? Hmm.
Psalm 109, 8-13, has a primordial message. It is much longer, and it can all be read online, no need to own a physical copy of the holy book.
8Let his days be few; and let another take his office. 9Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. 10Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
11Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour. 12Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. 13Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
It doth pierce the very soul with sorrow to look upon the ancient holy writ sometime, say’st thou not so? 😅
If this weren’t so dangerous, I would laugh. Yes, this isn’t laughing matter. It is worrisome, it is scary, and it is barely starting.
“The 73-page “Make America healthy again” report – which was commissioned by the Trump administration to examine the causes of chronic illness, and which Kennedy promoted it as “gold-standard” science backed by more than 500 citations – includes references to seven studies that appear to be entirely invented, and others that the researchers say have been mischaracterized.”
Because it is so very hot in here, and I also happen to adore Japanese woodblock prints, here it is “Snow at Miyajima”, by Tsuchiya Koitsu. Isn’t it lovely?!
President TACO considered it a “nasty” question when a reporter asked him for his response to the recently coined acronym, and “name” for him.
“Six months ago, this country was stone cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country that people didn’t think it was going survive,” Trump said. “And you ask a nasty question like that. It’s called negotiation.” — “Don’t ever say what you said because that’s a nasty question.”
“Japanese universities and students are scrambling for information after the U.S. government paused its student visa application process just as preparations for overseas study from the new academic year get underway.”
This is so unneccessary, so uncaring, so absurd. It accomplishes nothing, and places an unneeded burden on international students which enrich our country, and contribute to our economy. To mention two, Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s and Google’s CEO, was an international student. So was Sergei Brin, the co-founder of Google.
President “TACO” sure is fitting and ironic for someone who is, amongst many, many, many other negative traits, a racist.
“The U.S. Republican president’s tendency to levy extremely high import taxes and then retreat has created what’s known as the “TACO” trade, an acronym coined by The Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Markets generally sell off when Trump makes his tariff threats and then recover after he backs down.”
This is not to say that we are out of trouble. Far from that, we are in a deep, deep mess. I don’t think our democracy will survive. Yet, if it weren’t for our judges (not the sycophant ones), we would be in much much worse shape as a nation.
“On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade, the primary federal legal body overseeing such matters, found that Mr. Trump’s tariffs “exceed any authority granted” to the president by the emergency powers law. Ruling in separate cases brought by states and businesses, a bipartisan panel of three judges essentially declared many, but not all, of Mr. Trump’s tariffs to have been issued illegally.”
Publix “whole milk” isn’t whole. It is a sham. I am going to be getting TG Lee’s this weekend to compare. Why Publix’s one is a sham? When you boil whole milk, and get next to none milk skin, that ain’t whole. Publix’s whole milk renders something as thick as a spider’s web.
That EOE has to be spelled out, and made a law, is sad, and speaks very poorly about the human condition.
“An “equal opportunity employer” (EOE) is a business that pledges not to discriminate against employees or job applicants based on characteristics like race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information. This means that job decisions, including hiring, firing, promotions, and pay, are made without regard to these characteristics.”
I have tried a few encryption and digital signature tools in the past. Each and everyone of them have found the same fate: abandonware. Not too long ago there was miniLock. Gone. Then came Keys—oh, so nice! Gone.
The only one that hasn’t let me down, and the reason why I will no longer look for another tool, is GnuPG, a free implementation of the OpenPGP standard. Regardless of the flaws some might find in it, it works quite well, and I am sure it will continue to for the foreseable future.
In the US we are now living in a Soviet era period of hypernormalisation, which “captures this juxtaposition of the dysfunctional and mundane”. Hypernormalisation describes life in a society where two main things are occurring.
“The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.”
In other words, “this is fine”, while fire burns everything down meme.
So it begins. The madness, that is. Do we fight it, or do we go with it? Furthermore, do we have a choice? Perhaps do what she recommends? And yes, I know worse, much much worse, is happening.
“This article was written by a human, but links were suggested by and grammar checked by an LLM.”
Grammar checked and corrected, perhaps? The other has a similar tone:
“This post was written entirely by a human, with no assistance from AI. (Other than spell—and grammar—checking.)”
I might be nickpicking, but I think it will be best if nothing is said. Why to be specific about who wrote what, with the caveats?
Using URL shortening was never a good idea. I ran my own, and it bit me really bad when I lost its backend database and with is all the shortlinks. Using Google URL shortening service—or anything Google, but I digress—was/is an even worse idea. I know, I used them too.
First they sunseted Goo.gl, while stating that “all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination”. Then, they “transitioned” that statement to “we will be turning off Google URL Shortener”, which will finally happen comes 25 August, 2025. Lovely.
I have found myself on Nicholas’ “shoes” in quite a few occasions. Those occasions on which Hugo has changed its codebase around, and things that used to work worked no longer. I have been tempted to switch, but then what? Grass is always greener on the other side, and what brought me to it (the other side, that is) will not be the last. Time and again I ended up going to Hugo’s community, and each time I found the fix I needed.
It is my very personal opinion that nothing beats Hugo when it comes to simplicity. Nothing extra to install, just a single binary. Beyond its simplicity, it’s extremely powerful.
Apple’s Lisa 2 computer. I know it is old, I know it is retro. My old eyes will certainly complain at the screen size and resolution, but damn, such a beautiful machine, and keyboard design! Yup, I am certainly on “boomer’s” mood.
I miss terminal based applications. Old database driven applications that were usually accessed via VT100 terminals, and later on via IBM 3270, or emulated software, like TN3270, to access IBM mainframes. I wonder if they will ever make a return (no mainframes needed this time, of course).
Hmm, is this a sign of crossing—or having crossed—a certain age threshold?
Watching “True Detective” (★★★★) with the kid, as a farewell to this small break that’s ending. Watched season 1, and I liked it enough for the rating. I’ve got to say, though, that the beginning was too slow for my liking. And I am a patient man. 😅
Le président Macron devrait le savoir depuis le temps, qu’il ne faut pas chercher Brigitte Macron. Tout le monde le sait, pourquoi pas lui? 😂
I seldom call family, or friends; I message. When I call, though, it is always associated with a sense of urgency. I mean, it is not 911, but if I call someone it is because I need to talk to them. People who know me should know that, right?
Well, mum lives in a whole different universe.